Terrain - Roads

One of the terrain items I always struggle with in 3mm / 1:600 is roads. I really don't want roads that sit too high on top of the ground-level terrain, towering over my little troops. Well, unless it's meant to be an elevated road of course! I've tried many things over the years; from painting/drawing roads straight onto the surface, to using ribbon, to various resin and latex pieces. For various reasons I've finally concluded that I'm not going to be able to get roads that sit flush with the table surface, so I need to compromise as best as I can.

So I've re-visited latex modular roads. Timecast (producers of many fine 6mm resin terrain items) recently released their ranges of latex roads and rivers. These are the ones I've been using recently in the latest few battle reports. 

It turns out that they are quite nice and could be the answer to my problems. The roads are relatively thin, at about 2-3mm thickess. They come pre-cast in brown (for dirt roads) or grey (for cobblestone / paved). They are flexible too, which is one of the advantages of latex terrain since it means the roads can conform to hills and depressions and not just flat plains.

As I wanted them for the modern period, I have painted them up as bitumen highways for my 1:600 terrain setups. They seem to work ok:

a latex road from Timecast.
6mm dirt road looks ok when painted as a bitumen road for 3mm...